¡Blame the Voters!

Now here is a pretty dingalingism for you, Dr. Bones:

It is the voters who do the electing.... Therefor[e], blame the voters for what their elected officials do, or do not do.

Have no fear of the AstroTurf™bagger Community, sir!

Possibly economic TopPercenters DO hand out bucks galore to their dupes and their marks and their squawk-radio artists, to candidates for office, and to candidates elected to office, to 14,309.6 different Tanks of Neothought, but none of these benefactions have any bearing on la démocratie en Amérique, because ... (ta-DAH) ... because AstroTurf™ doesn’t buy pols, only voters buy polss.[1]

His Daddy Warbucks and his Uncle Rupert ought to give the neocomrade a special medal just for thinking of such a nifty. Should it actually catch on, perhaps they could give him half of Connecticut or thereabouts.

To be sure, it is a tad extreme even by militant extremist G.O.P. standards, so it may not corner the market instantly. Or ever.

But it certainly deserves to! Johannianity offers all that the Secret Sector has ever required in the way of utter irresponsability and unaccountability, and it offers it without the superficial (?) appearance of selfishness that comes with the Rand-Nozick-Dilbert ‘libertarianism’ product. The neoëvangelist of Mammon does not risk his flock noticin’ that they do not themselves happen to be Warbucks or Scrooges or Murdochs or Soroses as they are called upon to celebrate a True Freedumb product that only a Big Manager can make proper use of. Au contraire, the sweet little puppies of the Right are flattered by bein’ told how remarkably incorruptible they are.

And what goes down better with the Big Management Party base and vile than flattery? [2]

In an ideal and logical world, Foxcuckooland would toss out its present agitation and propaganda at once and switch over to this one. But of course the neocomrades could not turn on a dime even if their Oberkommando issued the order. As thing stand, the TopPercenters are rather heavily invested in the notion that money CAN influence organic persons as well as corporate persons. Remember that "Louisiana purchase" swift-boatin’ job they did on Sen. Landrieu? Or Neocomrade Dr. R. Limbaugh barkin’ and’ bellowin’ against supposed "slush funds" disquised as ‘porkulus’? None of that noise would make sense if voters are radically unpurchasable.

More abstractly and less immediately, intramural problems might develop inside the Party of Grant and Hoover: once the rank-and-file base and vile become genuinely convinced that bucks cannot matter in politics, what, exactly, would inspire them with awe and affection (genuine or well simulated) when they look up at their G.O.P. geniuses, the good folks who run that show and almost always have run it? True, bucks that cannot be exchanged for Power could still buy lots and lots of brandy and cigars and real estate and motor carriages and flyin’ machines and . . . . But even my low estimate of the ideological heirs of Gen. Hamilton does not involve them carin’ for nothin’ beyond consumer goodies.

It seems clear enough that what the sweet puppies want from their Party’s Big Managers is not so much trickle-down from the gravy train, but Respectability, which is, in its way, a spiritual affair. Sort of. Johannianity may or may not be able to accommodate that demand, but I fear the ideoproduct will need a little work first. In the preliminary version vouchsafed here, there is the grave difficulty that (for all that explicitly appears to the contrary), NO voters can be bought, none at all. If simply bein’ unpurchasable makes one Respectable, than everybody and her brother-in-law is entitled to call herself so.

Unfortunately what is common to all is dirt cheap. From Gen. Hamilton of New York all the way down through Governess S. Heath-Paling of AK-49, it has always been understood over to starboard that one can fail to be Respectable. And many do fail.[3] (Fortunately there is a place to put them politically. But that is another donkey.)

Perhaps I was too enthusiastic above [4]. Viewed in light of the long-term difficulty just expounded, the Neogospel accordin’ to Johann could be dismissed as only another glimpse of Foxcuckooland’s never-endin’ Great Snipe Hunt, the quest to establish that kiddie selfservatives (as well as KSM kiddiemasters a fortiori) are simply not subject to Original Sin the same way demonocrats and lieberals and "the Democrat party" have the misfortune to be. [5]

(( There remains the obvious cheap shot: "blame the voters for what their elected officials do" ought to mean that Neocomrade Johann would never even dream of blamin’ President Summers and Mr. O’Bama for anythin’ about the existin’ régime that displeases him.

(( Perhaps we may make a memorandumb of his name and check how well he complies with his own oracles? ))

I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.




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[1] Comrade Labour Commissar Reich started out from Brits v. Yanks, so perhaps it is not off-topic to point out that the Johannine "We the People" seems to have been studying Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam: litigants may give Our Honour as many golden candlesticks and vicuña coats as they like -- ¡the more the merrier! -- but must understand that these are sheer unsolicited marks of respect for Our Wunnerfulness, and will have no influence whatever on how their cases get decided.

[2] Nothin’.


[3] The current Party-and-AEIdeology line would perhaps define these impossible-to-respect losers as that half of the adult populace that "pays no taxes." I usually just say "the Bad Poor" myself, leaving unspecified exactly what, if anythin’, is bad about them in the eyes of the neocomrades, over and above technical credit-rating problems.


[4] But, as the lady said, "How can I know what I think before I see what I keyboarded?"


[5] I trust, Dr. Bones, you recall prof. Fischer’s ‘fallacy’ that runs "It is a sad thing to be a frenchman, for all Frenchmen must die."?